It may not register much on the permanently vibrating Richter scale which monitors this year's Bank of Ireland football championship, but Westmeath's victory at Tullamore yesterday was unexpected.

Although Laois were fairly awful and a deep disappointment after last year's evidence of improvement, Westmeath were impressive, thoroughly deserved to win - and probably by a lot more than four points.

Throughout the field Brendan Lowry's team were on top, from a superb performance by David Mitchell at full back to another incisive display by Dessie Dolan in the left corner of the attack.

They controlled matters comprehensively, took the lead in the 15th second of the match and, with the exception of six minutes of parity, maintained it.

It was particularly praiseworthy because luck wasn't always on their side; by halftime they should have had the match won, rather than lead by a mere four points.

As a consequence, Laois found themselves in touch up until fairly late in the match. But they weren't able to exert sustained pressure and never looked as if they could mount a comeback.

In the space of a minute Laois went from nearly equalising, when appeals for a free were turned down and Westmeath pointed at the other end in the 54th minute, to being effectively dead.

The match moved irrevocably beyond them in the 55th minute when Westmeath's Martin Flanagan soloed through the defence, initially looking for an opening to kick a point. Finally in the clear, he bent a shot into the left-hand corner of Fergal Byron's net.

Laois's ills had started early on. After an engaging opening quarter-of-an-hour saw the sides swap points freely, and with the match poised at three points each, matters began to slide beyond them.

Stephen Kelly's equaliser in the 13th minute was to be Laois's last score of the half. Westmeath picked up the pace and created a truckload of chances but took only four. Woodwork was struck, and Byron saved brilliantly from Dolan in the 29th minute and the ballooning deflection was scrambled off the line by Joe Higgins.

Tom Kelly played well at full back for Laois, but in front of him David Sweeney struggled to contain Flanagan, who picked up a good deal of ball and used it well. But it was at centrefield that Laois' fondest expectations were disrupted.

Having dominated the sector in recent meetings, Laois struggled yesterday. Westmeath's Rory O'Connell worked exceptionally hard and, with Damien Gavin, eclipsed Tony Maher and Noel Garvan.

Laois's fortunes revived briefly at the start of the second half when George Doyle came on and Garvan moved to wing forward.

During the period of Doyle's ascendancy Laois came back into the match, and three points from Dunne, twice, and a Michael Lawler free in the opening eight minutes of the second half cut the margin to a point, 06 to 0-7.

There was a glimmer of a chance a minute later when Stephen Kelly got in behind the Westmeath defence only to be deftly dispossessed by Mitchell.

A sign of Laois's increasingly apparent bankruptcy in attack was the series of frantic changes made by Tom Cribbin. Three players whose absence from the starting line-up had been noted - Damien Delaney, Hugh Emerson and Beano McDonald - all took the field.

Afterwards Cribbin stressed that he had had to take into account injuries to the players and, in fairness to him, no manager lightly fields footballers over whom injury concerns hover.

Delaney kicked his frees with customary efficiency and Emerson showed well for a few balls, but the momentum was against the team. Four minutes after the decisive Westmeath goal, Lawler was sent off for a second bookable offence and only one of the starting forwards - Derek Conroy and even his conversion from the half backs wasn't entirely successful - was still on the pitch.

Shortly after Lawler's departure, referee Michael McGrath sent off Westmeath's Ger Heavin for a second booking.

Laois got into hit-and-hope mode rather too early, but Emerson's presence in the forwards made that a tempting option. But with Mitchell in supreme form, nothing came of it and Westmeath pulled out the last score with Flanagan's point in injurytime.